“When they pulled up to the house, she followed her father, who insisted on carrying her suitcase, to the front door. She stepped inside after him and suddenly stopped. The house felt different, smelled different even, as if it were a living organism whose basic chemistry had changed.”
-Brit Bennett
“Jackson doesn’t participate in these conversations. Either he genuinely has nothing to say about the current state and future of his country, the entire world; or he doesn’t want to express his opinions. I get the feeling Jackson is like a train on a single track–one of those airport monorails. He goes around and around, the doors opening and closing, people he doesn’t know and doesn’t care to know getting in and getting out.”
-Melanie Finn
“Across from the pits, all the foreclosed houses are abandoned. The empty sockets of front yards, yanked from the ground like teeth, are filled with rain. It’s kind of beautiful in the darkness, as though the neighborhood is floating.”
-Alexander Weinstein
“I had no dimples, my mouth was wide, my hair grew crimped and fierce as wild lettuce from my head.”
-Danielle Dutton
“No one is in sight, but in months the white sands will be populated by the sunburned bodies of white tourists. From a plane flying overhead they might look like seals, their heads titled toward the rays, bodies open for as much exposure as possible, basking in luxury.”
-Nicole Dennis-Benn
“Paper cups floated in the foamy brown lake serene as swans.”
-Lucia Berlin
“Annika was speaking very fast and had apparently decided that the best strategy was to treat Willem like an eclipse and simply not look at him at all.”
-Hanya Yanagihara
“Rough channels of water meandered out in a maze through a forest of reeds on the canal side, and islands, oases of wind-contorted trees, appeared in the distance like sudden revelations.”
-Jeff Vandermeer
“Generous gestures, when she attempts them, seem to swipe through the lives of others like a random bear paw, often making matters worse. And she finds no momentum in sharing, in benevolence, in charity, no interaction with another person ever brought her a bolt of pure aliveness like entering the water on a still morning with the world empty in every direction to the sky. That first entry. Crossing the border of consciousness into, into what?”
-Anne Carson
“The twins are blond with big heads, skinny bodies dangling below like strings under balloons.”
-Amber Sparks
The Simile Museum 